1. Field
This invention is directed to a beverage sleeve that is placed on the outside of a drink container that can protect a consumers hand from heat, cold and/or wetness of the drink and also provide a comforting feel when holding the container.
2. Description of Related Art
Many companies such as Starbucks, McDonalds, Dunkin-Donuts, etc. give their customers thermally insulating sleeves to fit over their coffee cups in order to help shield their customer's hands from the temperature of their coffee, which can be approximately 200 degrees Fahrenheit. In the related art, those sleeves typically have the name of the Company selling the coffee, i.e., Starbucks, McDonalds, Dunkin-Donuts printed on the outside of the sleeve. However, because the coffee was sold in the controlled environment such as the company store, the only brand of coffee that is sold is the company's brand, and the taste of that coffee maybe the reason the customer came into the store in the first place. As such, the sleeves are not used as an advertising vehicle to try to persuade a customer to buy anything; they are used solely to protect the customer's hands.
In the related art, beverage sleeves have been sold that have variable diameters. As discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,000,801, a pivoting lever structure is provided that interconnects a first and second side wall sheet ends to define a lever tab portion. In order to increase the diameter of the beverage sleeve, the lever is pivoted toward the first side wall to space the first and second side wall sheet ends apart from each other. When a smaller diameter is desired, the lever is pivoted towards the second side wall to cause the second side wall to overlap the first side wall. As such, a complex and relatively expensive system is taught in the related art in order to provide a beverage sleeve to fit a container. As shown in the related art, the container sleeve is designed to fit around a soda can that typically has a circumference with a constant radius.
However, not all containers have the same shapes and/or sizes. For example, a pint glass will have a smaller diameter at the bottom and a larger diameter at the top. The shape of the beverage sleeve becomes very important since the flared aspect of most glasses, and all cups, introduce a challenge that must be overcome if one beverage sleeve is to fit snuggly around both a parallel, and a flared, sided container, and for the advertising printed thereon to appear easy to read. The design problem becomes even more complicated and compounded when one adds to the parallel sided, verses flared sided, problem, that drink containers also come in many different diameters. The related art discussed above does not appreciate or address these issues.